


Strange

by Diglossia



Category: Panik
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-01-22
Updated: 2010-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-06 13:20:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diglossia/pseuds/Diglossia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a time when the world made sense. There was a time when stargate went with SG-1. That time is gone, just like David. -Timo Sonnenschein, Gh'au Shiplog #24601</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

Halarran Year: 2574.8   
Earth Year: 2009 

I know this: my best friend is dead. Linke doesn't know much about how it happened but when he met David, he was already an android. 

Jan can't come with us. His life is in danger because of me. Everything is complicated but in the end, it's still my fault. My...powers brought Frank to us and he brought Juri. And then I sucked all the energy out of Juri and because of that Jan's now stuck. If he tries to go into zero space, the radiation will kill him. If he stays on Earth, the Council will kill him, too. 

I have to fix this. Jan doesn't deserve to be stuck like this. David, whatever part of him still exists, needs new braxyllium crystals to survive. 

Frank says we have ten days until we reach orbit. 

 

**Three Days Earlier **

Timo clamped his hands to his ears, praying the screams would stop. Every night now they were coming back, hoarse, strangled cries that no one else seemed to hear. David had thought Timo was crazy when he had mentioned it, saying that maybe it was a bad dream or something else.

It wasn't, Timo knew with absolute certainty. The screaming continued every night, far later than when he went to bed and would continue for hours, well into the morning. But, when Timo had told David that, it had only made David more confident that it was all just a dream caused by stress over the new CD.

The funny thing was- the screams didn't get quieter when Timo covered his ears. They didn't get louder, either, they simply stayed the same. Same pitch, same volume, not muffled in the slightest, like he wasn't hearing it with his ears at all.

ØØØ

It was clawing at him. If the neighbors would just stop copulating, he could think for a minute. Every day, over and over again, Linke could sense the sex on the male, a new girl every night but the hunger wasn't going down. Linke's wasn't either.The feeling, the need, had never been this strong before. It was inhuman, alright, so Linke couldn't exactly go about telling the guys. His senses were on hyper alert, pulling in information from everywhere. He could feel everyone around him, the five signatures in the band house, the one in the house next door, fifteen spread out across the street, and more every time a car passed by. If he had been more social, the other guys would have noticed it sooner. Linke hadn't left the house in almost a week, had barely even stepped outside of the upstairs hallway so he didn't have to feel everything.

The air in his room was becoming musty from keeping the windows closed. Linke had pulled out one of the summer fans from storage just to keep from suffocating in the increasingly deoxygenized air. He could cope with a fifteen percent decrease- that was far more normal back home than the oxygen-rich atmosphere here- but any more and his lungs would start to protest as his sight started to waver. During the night Linke would uncharacteristically leave his door open to bring in fresh air. It was quieter then, his friends' energies at a much lower level.

Soon, he knew he would have to get help. Linke couldn't hide in his room forever. He only prayed it was a sickness, a fluke of his slightly-fevered imagination that made him feel this way because if not…

If not, he was going to have to leave Earth.

ØØØ

Within days, the hunger had morphed into pain. Absolute, muscle-wrenching pain that Linke couldn't control. It felt like a thousand miniscule paper cuts, slicing away at layer after layer of skin so thinly that the slightest wisp of air hurt.

He closed his eyes, balling his hand in his sheets as another shard of pain dug into his skin, peeling another layer back. Linke screamed again, his muscles coming out in thick cords against his arms, his face purest agony.

Outside his door, not a sound could be heard.

ØØØ

"Hey, Chris, can I ask you a question?"

Linke looked up, surprised to see Timo actually talking to him again. The last few weeks had been rough on them all and their friendship had never been terribly strong.

Linke took a sip of his beer before answering. "What's up?"

Timo winced a grin and scratched at the back of his head.

"So this is gonna sound weird but…have you heard anything lately?"

Linke flicked his eyes to just below Timo's cheekbones as he tried to form an answer. That was a loaded question. What had he heard lately? Did Timo mean rumors or something within the band? Frank could have a new girlfriend that Linke hadn't bothered to take notice of, that was a possibility. Or maybe Timo meant some new music?

"Not really. Look, Timo, I've got something to work on-"

Timo grabbed his arm. Linke stared at him, shocked by the sudden gesture but not for the obvious reason. For a second- for a second, the hunger had roared inside of him, stronger than before. Their eyes locked.

"Timo-" he whispered.

Then their lips met, hard, fast, and so needy that it startled the both of them. Linke crushed his body against Timo's, experimenting with the glimmer of feeling he had felt before. Timo groaned wordlessly, pushing back against him.

He felt it again. The hunger was going away, as if Timo were some sort of nutrient. It was an insane thought. Timo was just a human, a Terran without any special background, but he kissed like fire, searing through Linke's being and quieting the sharp ache within him. This was more than friendship. They were going farther than they had ever before with anyone, something inside of them directing them where to go, telling Linke that this spot was sensitive while Timo reached for him, pulling Linke on top of him.

They needed few words, they were so in tune with one another. It would have frightened Timo had his head been at all clear. But his blood was all but singing to Linke, his insides thrumming with every touch. Linke laid a kiss on Timo's shoulder and it seared him to the bone in the most delicious way.

When Linke finally thrust in, burying himself within Timo, the rapper cried out, grabbing Linke's shoulders, digging deep with his nails. Linke gasped in pain and in pleasure, moving with Timo, setting an almost frantic pace, gasping, whimpering, moaning, making sounds without meaning until, with a strangled cry, Timo came.

He was sweaty, his face twisted in the oddest expression but to Linke in that moment, he looked beautiful. Linke thrust in slowly, helping Timo to come down as he pushed himself that little bit further until he came as well. Timo arched up as Linke filled him with seed. He sighed softly when Linke pulled out, turning on his side and grabbing for Linke clumsily.

They fell asleep tangled up in the bedsheets, both oblivious to the fact that it was the first time in almost a week either of them had slept through the night.

ØØØ

Linke whuffled in his sleep, curling back into the warm body next to him. The hunger was gone, sated more than enough. Whoever was beside him was deliciously warm.

Not Timo. Timo thought he was David's; Linke couldn't take Timo. Linke swallowed hard and let his eyes gaze over the man next to him. Linke shuddered. He had never liked the idea of chu'bhids but chu'bhid bonds were reciprocated or he wouldn't be in this predicament. The hunger would have gone away sooner without the attraction.

Timo turned, Linke thinking he was still asleep. His hand reached out and closed around Linke's arm as the bassist realized he was very, very wrong.

"You better fucking explain what just happened," Timo snarled.

The door banged open, interrupting anything Linke had to say. Frank burst in, his brow set in an angry line.

"Shut up and get up," he commanded, looking straight at Linke. "We have a problem."

Linke did as Frank told him, surprisingly meek in Timo's eyes. He grabbed his clothes from where they lay scattered on the floor and the bed.

"What's going on?" he asked as he pulled his cargo pants on, decidedly not looking at Timo as the rapper scrambled to get decently dressed. Frank slammed the door shut for a measure of privacy. There would be bigger problems if the news spread through the bandhouse.

"The Council is mad. He's too dangerous, Chris. We need to get him off Terra before they decide he's too much of a threat. Again."

"I thought you said you weren't sure-" Linke began but Frank cut him off.

"I lied. He's the one and now we're all in fucking trouble."

Linke glanced back at Timo quickly. He was staring at Frank, listening to every word, and Linke didn't have anything close to a full explanation ready to tell him.

"So what do you want us to do?" he asked.

Frank blew out an angry breath. "We need to get him off-world as soon as possible. I vote we take him in my ship and get him as far away from Terra as we can, then go from there. The moonbase is too close to be of any use to us."

"Wonderful," Linke muttered.

"What are we going to tell Jan?" Linke shrugged.

"Tell him we're going on a trip or something. Make something up. It's not all that hard."

"You ready?" Frank asked, nodding towards Timo. Linke sighed.

"As ready as we can be. You have supplies onboard for how long?" he asked.

"A few weeks. Nothing fantastic but it'll last us. If you need anything, grab it now. Come on." Frank motioned out the door, letting Timo and Linke file past awkwardly before shutting it behind them. Linke thought briefly about his laptop and leaving it behind. He snagged his bag out of the bathroom, shoved his, Timo, and Frank's toothbrushes inside with a thing of toothpaste and joined his bandmates in the hallway. Timo had his own bag and Frank's was on the floor, having been ready to leave since before he woke Timo and Linke up. Frank grimaced and waved his hand towards Jan's room, telling Linke silently to go talk to him.

"Jan?" Linke asked as he knocked on the DJ's door. Timo and Frank stood back in the hallway in silence. "I'm going out with Timo and Frank for a while. We might not be back for a few days." Hearing nothing, he knocked again. "Jan?"

"Right here." Linke blinked in surprise. Jan was standing right next to him, his arms folded across his chest. Linke realized he was holding something close to him.

"Oh, hey. Look, the three of us are going on a bit of a trip. Will you be okay here with Juri and David?"

"I, um, know," Jan said, tightening his hold on the bundle in his arms. "About everything, to be honest. You and Frank and everything."

"You do?" Linke asked, more than a bit alarmed. To his knowledge, Jan was fully Terran. Terrans weren't supposed to be aware of off-worlders. This could spell very bad things for them all.

"What is that?" Timo asked, staring at the thing in Jan's arms.

Jan blushed, looking at Frank as though asking permission. Linke glowered, realizing quickly that this was a ruse. Frank had already talked to Jan, already knew everything. It was just another fracking mind game. Frank nodded at Jan.

"This," Jan said, "is Juri."

"Juri is a shell-person," Linke told Timo. "Part of his body is inside the shell and, with the help of sensory holograms, he can pass as a normal person."

Timo stared at him, his eyes switching from Linke to Juri and back again in dumb shock. Frank huffed, expressing his apparent boredom. Linke glared at him, wondering what had made the diva come out today of all days. Frank was almost never this bad around Terrans.

Jan looked straight at Timo as he explained. "Juri was dying of a terminal disease a couple of years ago. He was so sick that he couldn't get out of bed. No one knew whether he was going to ever recover or even be able to leave a hospital bed. So he made a decision. They put his brain stem in a shell."

"I'm not sure I'm really getting this," Timo said just as Linke asked: "How did you find out about Juri?"

Jan's face flushed an even deeper shade of pink.

"You have to know, it's not like I've been trying to keep this a secret from you or anyone else. I wasn't supposed to know so I thought you weren't supposed to know either and I was really close- I am really close to Juri and-"

"Jan." If Linke didn't stop the DJ, it was likely he would ramble on for ages.

Jan scrunched his face up and stared down at the shell in his arms, stroking the metal with a curious fondness.

"We were in the middle of…something and he started flickering, like a TV set when it's about to lose a signal. I thought I was imagining things but suddenly the hologram or whatever shut off and then he-" Jan lifted the shell, still holding it like a dear pet, like it meant everything to him. "-appeared and it was kind of obvious something was wrong."

"I learned later his sensory programming malfunctioned. It shut down right when we-" Jan blushed and lost his words. "Anyways, I know."

"Well, it's decided then. We're all going," Frank said triumphantly.

"David," Timo said tightly. "You've forgotten David."

"Oh, him?" Frank's smile could have frozen fire. "That's not a problem. We'll just power him down like we did Juri." 

Linke almost punched Frank right there. Timo was on the verge of hyperventilating, having just been told that one of his friends was little more than a clever flash of lights after having woken up in his friend's bed, and it was grating on Linke's nerves. He was becoming increasingly sensitive to Timo's moods and reactions. It was a strange but welcome feeling.

"Why don't I just call him?" Frank continued. "Let's see, I press this button-" he fiddled with his shirt, pressing down on something hidden just beneath it over his breast pocket. "Oh, wait, it seems he's forgotten to put a hologram up." Frank walked over to the hallway closet. "Seeing as he's right-" Frank turned the doorhandle and yanked it open. "-here."

"Timo!" David yelped, his hand outstretched towards his best friend as he fell to the floor. Frank sniffed haughtily. 

"As I thought, eavesdropping," he said. Linke thought he might kick David while he was down and so he crouched down and gave David a hand. As with all good sensory holos, he felt nothing but perfectly human skin and bone.

"You were trying to kidnap Timo!" David accused. "Of course, I was eavesdropping! You have no business taking him off-world without-"

"Shut it," Frank told David. "Your opinion is completely unnecessary, droid."

"Don't talk to David like that!" Timo snapped, stepping forward, his confusion forgotten as anger overwhelmed him. Linke felt the emotion slam into him. He swayed into David, the guitarist moving to support him quickly.

"Why not?" Frank challenged Timo, his eyes glittering with almost sadistic amusement. "He's just a droid, not even a shell-person."

Timo turned to Linke. "Chris?" he asked.

"He is and he isn't," Linke said, rubbing his forehead and the headache forming there. "David's a droid, just like Juri. The real David's been dead for a long time."

"David?" Timo asked his best friend, his eyes wounded. "Is that the truth?"

"I'm sorry," David said, looking at the floor. "You weren't supposed to ever find out. I'm sorry."

"Hologram off," Frank snapped.With those words, David was gone. A small, mechanical, dog-like creature the size of a chihuahua stood in his place, looking very, very similar to the contraption in Jan's arms. Timo stared, then knelt and reached out to touch it. Cold metal. Linke closed his eyes as he felt Timo's heart break.


	2. Part 2

Linke wished they would have had time for explanations but Frank was adamant that they leave as soon as possible. He shoved Timo and the shells in the van, Jan not needing any incentive to follow after them. Linke could only clutch the door handle as Frank floored the gas. Frank talked rapid-fire as they drove. 

"We're going to drop Jan off at the moon base. If we try to take him into zero space, the radiation will kill him." Linke didn't bother to say 'I know.'

"Why can't he just stay here?" Timo asked. Frank grit his teeth.

"If he stays here, the Council will kill him," Linke said. "Regular humans aren't supposed to know about non-Terrans. Hybrids are allowed but he's not."

Timo's eyes widened and, for once, he had nothing to say. Linke thanked the Unnamed Gods for that blessing.

They reached the warehouse quickly. It was in a terrible part of time, the sort of place odd sounds wouldn't be questioned so much as dutifully ignored, but most of what lay before them was holographic projections anyway. Frank drove straight into what appeared to be a cement wall, passing through with all the ease of walking through an open door. Linke kept his eyes studiously forward, knowing Frank would leap into action at any second. He heard Jan gasp. Timo made no sound.

Frank wrenched his door open, snapping orders to Jan and Linke, the latter of whom ignored them. Jan grabbed the shells and stood nervously at Frank's side while Linke took his time making sure Timo was halfway alright. He took a great deal of pleasure at the purple color around Frank's cheeks.

"Get in," Frank ordered, gesturing behind him.

"Get in what?" Timo asked. "There's nothing there." Linke cringed. _Really bad timing, Timo,_ he thought. _Really fucking bad timing._ Frank looked pissed.

"Just do as he says," Linke said, trying to move his mouth as little as possible.

"But there's nothing ther-"

Linke grasped the back of Timo's shirt and shoved him forward, pushing through the hologram before he could say something stupider. Once they passed the barrier, Timo stopped to stare at the apartment sized hatch. Linke glanced up, his eyes sweeping the ship. Last time he had been inside of there had been well over two years ago. Not a lot seemed to have changed. Frank certainly hadn't.

"Linke, power it up," came the order the second Frank and Jan crossed the barrier.

"I can't. I don't have the e-"

"Then show Timo," Frank snapped, cutting him off. "We don't have time for this. The longer we stay here-"

"-the worse it gets. I know."

Linke chewed it over in his mind, trying to think of a way to make this work.

He sighed and grabbed Timo by the wrist, dragging him to the converter just inside the hull from the engines. Timo seemed to be in a daze, not that Linke entirely blamed him, considering it was his first time inside a ship. He had to all but slam the rapper's palm onto the converter to get the flow going, wondering whether it was a smart idea to use such an obviously unstable source but, really, what choice did they have?

The engines hummed as energy poured in. The cabin grew increasingly warmer until the temperature was just below uncomfortable. Frank checked the various screens, punching buttons in a seemingly random array. He gripped the clutch, pulling it back slowly. The engines hummed louder.

"Hold on," Linke murmured to Timo. 

With an awful screech, they were off. 

"Just a little longer and we'll be off this dratted planet," Frank called from the bridge. "We've reached the last stretch of the thermosphere. Engine speed at 2500 kilometers per second." Linke nodded, only vaguely aware of what Frank was talking about or that he was talking at all. Timo was growing increasingly anxious, though he was hiding it well, and that was eating away at Linke's focus. His overwhelming urge was to yank Timo off the bridge and get him as far away from the vid screens and the controls as he could. Frank was spouting jargon like nobody's business and that, coupled with his sudden animosity towards the rapper, was making things worse. A confused and uneasy Timo was not a good thing. 

Just as suddenly as they had lifted off, the sound of the engines calmed to a dull roar. Frank checked the vid screens once more before sitting back and stretching his arms behind his head. 

"We should reach the moonbase within a few hours, no more than six at this speed." 

Timo's eyes flicked from Frank to Linke but he said not a word. Linke nudged him. 

"Why don't you go find Jan? He's gonna need someone to distract him for a while." 

 

ØØØ

Linke scratched at his left arm, at the tattoos there. It had started as an attempt to wile the time away and to keep out of Frank's hair; now it had turned into a question and answer session with Timo and Jan alternating.

"So you're an alien?" Timo asked. Linke shook his head.

"I'm human but my people left Earth a long time ago. Humans have had the capacity for space travel since before the Roman Empire. Most just haven't been able to survive the radiation. The Apollo moon landings are as far as normal humans can get. A regular human gets past this solar system and they die from exposure."

"Uh, so this…thing between us, what it? I know I didn't feel this way just a couple days ago."

Linke smiled.

"I didn't either. My people are different from normal humans. There isn't quite the need to get married and settle down since any union among Halarrans is considered acceptable if it produces children so long as both parents provide for the child. We do get lonely, though, with our long lives so a thousand or so years ago the Gods gave us a blessing in the form of chu'bid bonds, special bonds that form between two people to facilitate long-term companionship."

"You're religious?" Timo asked incredulously.

"I believe there are spirits out there that brought us together," Linke said serenely. He had spent the last few hours searching for a sign that his suspicions were correct, that his mysterious illness had been simply a trial to prove his worth as a proper chub'bid partners. Everyone knew that these things were rather mysterious. One had to experience them firsthand to truly understand. "We're somewhat like soul mates, Timo."

Frank snorted. He had been listening to the conversation but this was the first time he had actually said anything.

"Not even close. You're feeding off his energy, Timo. It's a drug to you, one that you're addicted to. Every time you two get together, you get a hit and you're good for a while. The longer you stay away, the more you need. You start pulling from anywhere you can, taking little bits every day but getting more and more as time goes on until you drain everything else. You fucked Juri's power up badly until it was almost down to nothing and then you centered on Linke until you nearly drained him, too. That's why he's been in so much pain lately. You're killing him by staying away."

"Lately, your energy needs have been increasing. Basic electricity wasn't enough to sustain your body, at least not in the amounts you were exposed to, so you keyed into Linke's life source. That's how we're in this mess."

"He's a receiver, he can't send electrical energy so most people can't pick up on his output. His energy signature is very different from mine or yours and you somehow-" Frank's emphasis on somehow made Timo flush- "got addicted to it."

Linke glared at Frank. "That's not true, Timo. It was a test by the Gods. It's in no way your doing."

"Then explain why you weren't the only one affected," Frank demanded nastily, his head cocked towards Timo. "Tell me why you didn't even start looking at Timo till this shit went down."

"The Unnamed Gods were testing me!"

"Your Gods are a fucking joke!"

"You wouldn't understand, you're not Halarran!"

"I fucking well understand that he's killing you and you're too damn blind by your mystical crap to realize it!"

ØØØ

"Then David is just like Juri. He's real, just without a body, right?" Jan asked. Juri's shell was still in his lap, held protectively between Jan's folded legs. Jan had flat out refused to let Juri or David out of his sight since lift-off, for which Linke was grateful. Timo was in no shape to cope with a low-functioning shell. If anything, he'd make the situation worse when he drained the absolute reserves from the shell.

_"He's a sensory hologram. He can make you think you smell him, hear him, even feel him but there's nothing there. David's model is top of the line, though. He's hard to tell. The artificial intelligence's astounding."_

_"It's not AI," Linke said. Frank rolled his eyes._

_"Of course not, if you really believe that garbage about essences and brain technology. I'll concede that David was a person once but he's not now. You need a body to be human and a shell doesn't cut it."_

Linke blinked, rearranging his thoughts, trying to make Frank's words go away. That discussion had taken place a long time ago, when he and Frank had first truly met, when Linke had first seen the sweet, home-sick southern boy façade flake away to reveal the diva offworlder beneath.

Linke shook his head. "No." He licked his bottom lip and frowned, trying to think of something unbiased to tell Jan. There were conflicting theories about the nature of shell people, ranging from an absolute belief in their humanity to the far more conservative views that Frank held. It was tempting to start up a debate with Jan, very tempting but they couldn't afford a major argument with Frank at the moment. Frank, lead singer of Panik, could take a fight any day with his mellow personality. Frank the half-Terran pilot was far more mercurial in temperament. It was a pity; Linke would have loved to go into it with someone who hadn't grown up with the technology.

"David is an experimental technology, that is an indisputable fact. Juri, as you said, is a person without a body. He has a functioning brain stem that uses the shell for sensory input. He's very much alive but completely dependent on that shell for life support. As such, he can be removed from that shell and placed into another one, tapping directly into any computer network that can support him.

David isn't like that. Juri was dying when he was removed from his body. David was never removed."

"What? That doesn't make any sense."

"David is an imprint, a copy of himself." Linke gestured but realized Jan was not making the right connection. He was slightly disturbed by the idea of being the first person to explain this to Jan, wondering whether his explanation would have a lasting effect, positive or negative. "It's a bit like saving a file onto a disc or burning a CD, in that it's a perfect copy of the original just not the original."

"A clone," Jan said dubiously.

"Not re-"

Suddenly, the ship banked hard to port and they were thrown across the room, the engines screeching.

"Juri!" Jan screamed, grabbing for the shell as they rocked dangerously back and forth. Linke groaned and got up onto unsteady feet, the room blacking out as he moved forward, clutching at the walls he barely remembered as he made his way to the controls and Frank.

"What happened?!" he yelled over the engines, his voice cracking slightly with the worry that was impossible to hide. Frank whipped his head around, his teeth gritted in a hard line.

"Something hit us, obviously."

Linke couldn't resist rolling his eyes.

"Don't be a snothead. I came up here to see if you were okay."

"I'm fine as you can see," Frank said, flicking a toggle-shaped button. His eyes were already back on the controls, his face a bored mask. "Go back to playing with Timo or whatever it is you two get up to together."

"I wasn't with Timo," Linke said acidly. Frank was getting on his last nerves. Linke really wanted to take a swipe at the pilot, knock some goddamn manners into his Arrogancy. "I do do things other than spend time with him."

"Sure you do," Frank muttered, not deigning to look back at Linke.

"Fuck you," Linke snapped. He stormed out of the bridge, wishing very much that the hydraulics on the door would allow him to slam it.

He was out of the cabin too soon to see Frank smile.

ØØØ

It was little more than two hours more before they reached the moonbase. Frank took Jan and Linke onto the bridge and sealed the doors so that Timo couldn't hear a thing. He was anxious, not content to pace back and forth but unable to find anything better to do.

From Frank's talking earlier, Timo could figure out that Jan was going to leave them very soon for some reason he didn't honestly understand. All this talk of energy sucking and the weird little bit with Linke and the room off the bridge had done nothing to ease Timo's confusion. Something was wrong with him, wrong enough that he could go into space and Jan couldn't.

Timo didn't feel like he was sucking energy out of anything. He hadn't felt anything, not even a jolt when Linke had placed his hand down on that machine and the engines had started.

Well, if he really thought about it, he might have felt something. A faint burning or something. There had been heat involved but Frank had expected Linke to be able to do what he had made Timo do. Timo frowned but didn't stop his pacing.

He pressed his ear to the bridge door, hoping to hear something. He might as well have been listening to a brick wall. Timo growled and slammed his fist into the door. Surprisingly, it opened and Timo found himself being crushed into a hug by Jan, the DJ looking almost tearful.

"I don't know when we're gonna see each other again," he said. "Frank didn't want me to but I wanted to say goodbye before I go. I promise I'll take care of David for you."

Timo nodded, his arms neither holding nor pushing Jan away. He was confused.

"We're here already? Why're you taking…him?" Timo couldn't bear to say David. That _thing_ wasn't David.

"Chris says I can fix them at the base," Jan said, smiling weakly up at Timo. "When you come back, they'll be back to normal."

"Jan-" Timo began. "David's not ever going to be back to normal." Jan pulled away from him and looked at him fiercely.

"Not you, too. Frank doesn't think Juri's real but I know he is. He's got thoughts and feelings that are too smart to not be human. He's real," Jan said sadly, petting Juri's shell like a lap dog. He looked up at Timo, straight into his eyes. "And I want him back."

ØØØ

Frank scrubbed his hand through his brown hair and bit the inside of his lip, suppressing the urge to say a few choice words. Linke was kneeling next to Timo, who was laying on his side, dead asleep on the floor of the bridge. The bassist looked worried, exhausted, obviously reluctant to leave Timo there alone. 

Frank said emotionlessly. _ Linke said, his eyes not moving from where Timo's chest rose and fell. Frank's brow creased. _

 

Linke whispered. Frank scowled. 

 

_ Linke said, glancing back at his friend for a moment before turning back to Timo. He traced down Timo's shoulder to his elbow, stroking it gently. _

Frank's eyes flashed. 

he spat sarcastically. 

Frank nodded. 

 

Neither spoke. Timo stirred slightly but did not awaken. 

_t going to hurt anybody again. He had to touch Linke, no matter their feelings for each other, or Linke would start to weaken. The screaming would come back. This time Timo would know it was because he was killing Linke slowly._


End file.
